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MarkWhittington writes "During an interview with USA Today on the eve of the arrival of the Mars Rover Curiosity, NASA administrator Charles Bolden had some interesting thoughts on why a humans-to-Mars mission should be international and not American-led, how the world should react positively to the Chinese beating America back to the moon, and what he would do (or rather not do) if NASA were to have an 'unlimited' budget."

In the even that China reaches a point that we achieved 40 years ago... and that we haven't been able to do again since? No, I will be disappointed in my government insisting we spend more putting bullets in the heads of children, bombs in jungles and scrub hillsides and bailing out incompetent, greedy industries. All the while idiot Republicans scream constantly that we need to cut even more government spending on irrelevant things while not raising taxes to pay for the debts accrued due to shitty spending policies over the last 30 years.

We could be going "Welcome to Armstrong Base!" to the Chinese taikonauts landing on the moon, and for a fraction of what we've spent slaughtering people and covering for the incompetent. Instead we've squandered what we had with only a death toll and debt to show for it.

I for one would rather see us spend money on another moon mission than trying to convince Afghans about the glories of representative government, or for DHS to research why kids get fat when they eat too much bacon.

Lets not forget about the dramatic shift in social standing of tech/enginee

Reps tend to want lower gov spending except on military. Dems tend to want lower spending except on social entitlements of their liking.

No, they don't. They each talk that way, but when Reps are in office, government spending goes up. And when Dems are in office, government spending goes up (with the possible exception of Clinton, but he also had a giant revenue surplus to work with).

The Reps were all too happy to bail out the banksters, so any claims about them wanting lower spending are bullshit.

It also would've been suicide to not bail out the banks. Nobody wants that.

The problem with the bailout was what happened immediately after it: as soon as the bankers got the money, everyone was all too happy that "they'd really learned their lesson" and that new regulation was simply going to starve off the recovery!

Even if that were true, the only thing it means is that we should've picked a growth target, written some laws and said "these come into effect here, it's about 5 years away, you've been warned

No, giving money to people who've proved they can't manage it is stupid, and it rewards the wrongdoers. It never should have been done. If the banks are that important to the economy, they should have been seized by the government, and then broken apart and privatized later. Governments seize critical industries all the time. You don't leave the same morons in charge when things go south, and you sure as hell don't give them a fortune in taxpayer money so they can have a big bonus.

Maybe the reason the US hasn't gone back to the moon is because they already went several times, had a look around, bounced around, collected some rocks, planted a flag, shot some film, and decided there wasn't really much else you could do on a barren landscape with vacuum for an atmosphere. If China eventually gets to the moon that will guarantee an increase in the NASA budget to go back and make sure China or anyone else doesn't occupy the proverbial high ground. A scenerio like that would turn the proj

Like the NOAA? The USGS? Federal funding for NPR/Planned Parenthood? The reason those are targeted, despite being a pittance compared to other things, is purely political. Cutting them will kill extremely useful services while saving precisely shit.

We shouldn't raise taxes, either.

Well that's genius. Even if we had a balanced budget we'd need to raise taxes.

What the hell is raising taxes going to solve?

Paying down the massive debt we've accrued?

They'll spend more and our deficit will only get slightly less bigger than it would have otherwise!

So instead you insist we not raise taxes and... do what, exactly? Nothing? Got it.

Things like the insanely large defense budget, and handing the younger generations money to the richest segment of the population (everyone wants Warran Buffet to pay more in taxes, NO ONE is asking what the hell we're doing giving him a social security check every month or paying for all his medical bills).

You could eliminate the non-defense discretionary budget 100% (elimiate every non-defense segment of the government) and we'd still be running a deficit.

You could eliminate the non-defense discretionary budget 100% (elimiate every non-defense segment of the government) and we'd still be running a deficit.

And if you eliminated the defense budget 100%, we'd still be running a deficit.

In fact, our deficit would still be in the top five of all time....

If you paid off the entire US budget deficit, you'd be acting fiscally negligent and giving away revenue/

The US has absolutely no need, nor should it, hold no deficit. The only thing it needs to do is ensure that GDP grows, on average, slightly faster then the deficit does. If that can be maintained, then the portion of the budget needed to service the deficit will shrink - eventually being eaten up by inflation.

It would be foolish to try and actually pay off the entire deficit, since it's unnecessary. The

Social Security and Medicare must be massively reformed to be means based and not handouts to everyone over 65 (who are far far richer as a group than everyone under 30).

Medicare, maybe. I'm a single payer advocate, so there's no point in arguing that - we won't agree.

Social Security? It doesn't work that way. Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit or government spending - it's a seperate, self-supporting insurance system. It's not currently running a deficit and won't for a few years at least. It costs the government $0 - in fact, the surpluses have been poured into the federal budget (which is why people scream that the feds are raiding it).

Social Security? It doesn't work that way. Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit or government spending - it's a seperate, self-supporting insurance system. It's not currently running a deficit and won't for a few years at least. It costs the government $0 - in fact, the surpluses have been poured into the federal budget (which is why people scream that the feds are raiding it).

Anyone who tells you Social Security needs to be cut to reduce the budget is trying to pull one over on you.

Social Security doesn't work that way. It's just another 15% tax on income in addition to the normal income tax. Coupled with that is a pretty retarded pyramid scheme for paying a little bit for everyone's retirement. It's also not break even, even if you pretend to respect the founding myths like the "lockbox". It has been in the red in that sense since 2010.

My opinion is drop the pension part altogether except for some needs based thing to keep Grannie from eating catfood. And either drop the 15% tax o

Social Security doesn't work that way. It's just another 15% tax on income in addition to the normal income tax. Coupled with that is a pretty retarded pyramid scheme for paying a little bit for everyone's retirement. It's also not break even, even if you pretend to respect the founding myths like the "lockbox". It has been in the red in that sense since 2010.

It's a tax because the government is doing it. If you were buying retirement insurance, it would be a premium. What's the difference? You could mandate everyone get a retirement program of some sort, similar to the health insurance mandate, I suppose. You'd still pay money into it either way.

The only reason it doesn't break even right now is because of the 1 year 2% reduction in that tax. Without that tax break, it would have stayed nice and solvent right up to the point where the baby boomers all reti

It's a tax because the government is doing it. If you were buying retirement insurance, it would be a premium. What's the difference? You could mandate everyone get a retirement program of some sort, similar to the health insurance mandate, I suppose. You'd still pay money into it either way.

Or you could just not have such a program. There's no reason for a society, civilized or otherwise, to have institutionalized retirement.

Frankly, it wouldn't be right for either of you to get a payout since the insurer spent the insurance proceeds instead of investing them and is paying (for the moment) insurance payouts with other peoples' payments, milking the con for a little while longer so that they can get as much money out of you as they can.

It wouldn't be right to get the service you paid for? WTF?

"From who?" is the question here. The insurer by contract should provide the service, but they're in the act of reneging on that contract. So you shouldn't be able to demand the service from another paying customer. Current recipients of US Social Security (and many other public pensions) get their money directly from other payers. There's no saving or investing of past So

Or you could just not have such a program. There's no reason for a society, civilized or otherwise, to have institutionalized retirement.

Do you know why we have Social Security in the first place? Are you aware of the problems it was designed to solve?

What do you plan to replace it with? "Nothing" is not an acceptable answer.

"From who?" is the question here. The insurer by contract should provide the service, but they're in the act of reneging on that contract. So you shouldn't be able to demand the service from another paying customer. Current recipients of US Social Security (and many other public pensions) get their money directly from other payers. There's no saving or investing of past Social Security payments. That money is long gone.

Yes. That's because it's insurance. Learn how it works. A good start would be the paragraph you apparently completely missed in my last post.

And when the recipients are also the ones who voted for the current setup, it's a rather blatant theft by older generations from the younger. Why should such contracts be honored when they could have been fixed any time in the past 80 years and weren't?

Because they weren't broken in the first place. When the current recipients of Social Security were paying in, they were paying for the generation before them. It's part of t

Your health, life, car, and home insurance works exactly the same way. You think your premiums go into an account just for you? Unless you go around crashing your car every couple of years, your car insurance pays for other people's wrecks. Your life insurance payments go to other people. The whole point is that you get money when you have a legitimate claim.

The insurance company has to either keep considerable assets on hand in case of a large scale payout, or reinsure with someone else who does that. They can't just payout by redirecting money from other customers' payments.

If you think that's a scam, you're free to drop all the above (at least until 2014 for health insurance).

I'm not free to drop Social Security. I'm not free to drop health insurance in 2014. That's how a government-backed scam works. Make it mandatory with a solid voting bloc that benefits, then it doesn't matter how transparent the con is.

The insurance company has to either keep considerable assets on hand in case of a large scale payout, or reinsure with someone else who does that.

And what, would you say, are the assets of the U.S. government?

They can't just payout by redirecting money from other customers' payments.

They can, and they do. Where do those assets come from in the first place? If you bought a $100,000 life insurance plan and was killed by a drunk driver the next day, where does that $100,000 they pay your family come from?

I'm not free to drop Social Security.

Sorry if that was unclear, but I was not saying that you were. I was saying you were free to drop life, home, car, and (for another year and a half) health insurance.

I'm not free to drop health insurance in 2014.

See above.

That's how a government-backed scam works. Make it mandatory with a solid voting bloc that benefits, then it doesn't matter how transparent the con is.

Insurance companies are REQUIRED by law to invest their income in order to have money to pay out claims.

You are forbidden by law from setting up an insurance company that pays out claims to some policy holders only with money from the other holders. They must hold investments to raise the money over time to pay policies.

This is where the bait and switch of Social Security comes in. Technically they've invested the money that comes in, but in reality the g

I never said Social Security wasn't mismanaged. The surpluses in the past should have been invested for the contingency we're going to face with the boomer retirement.

That doesn't mean the program is bad, just that the government sucks at not keeping its grubby hands off the stash. The solution? Stop voting for politicians who refuse to raise taxes to support the budget. They're going to get the money somewhere, and for quite some time that somewhere was the Social Security surplus.

I really do not get why progressives are so violently adamant about not means testing Social Security.

Social Security and Medicare must be massively reformed to be means based and not handouts to everyone over 65

Social Security is a government-run insurance program. The people getting those benefits (at least, the retirement benefits, I'm not addressing the other things SSI has gotten into) get them based on how much they paid into the system during their (or their spouse's) working years. Pay more in, get more out. It's no different than any private life insurance / retirement program, except the return

It's not insurance because it pays out for a situation that is extremely likely to happen. But it definitely is government-run. I agree on that.

The people getting those benefits (at least, the retirement benefits, I'm not addressing the other things SSI has gotten into) get them based on how much they paid into the system during their (or their spouse's) working years.

They should be getting less than they are then. They live too long.

If you take that away, you're essentially stealing from those people, because when they paid that extra 15% into FICA, they were promised Medicare and SS benefits when they retired in exchange.

It's interesting how it's not theft when someone exploits a political system to get others to pay for their selfish gain, and it is theft when someone doesn't want to pay into something that's they're not going to benefit from. Who made those "promises" that we're all supposed to keep? Why it's the s

Insurance is still insurance even if it pays out for an extremely likely situation.

But there are other characteristics of Social Security that preclude it from being insurance. The key one is that not only does it pay out for an extremely likely situation, but the situation in question is not a risk. The payout occurs whether something bad happens or not. And the worst that can happen, namely, you die, actually reduces the payout.

It like other pension schemes is really a variation of an annuity not insurance.

Insurance is really just a bet. Just because you're betting stupidly doesn't mean it's not a bet. Think of that scene from Austin Powers where he choose to stay on a 5 in blackjack.

A lot of things are bets, including annuities. Not all of those bets are insur

The situation is very much a risk. The risk is "I might live longer than I have money to spend"

Well, consider why it isn't a problem for anyone else. They just get a paying job and the problem goes away. If they can't work because they're too infirm, then they have a need, which a need-based system could address.

The non-hypocritical thing to do to fulfill your responsibility is to pay off your debts. Ending SS would be the hypocritical thing, as you're just walking out on your responsibility

Your forefathers bought a bad deal and shoved the responsibility on to you. Sucks that you have to pay for their mistake, but that's reality.

No one buys that. When Social Security is cut (directly or through untracked inflation) or even eliminated, then the above putrid rationalization will be replaced by the new morality and the new doublespeak, which might be just as odious (but at least the budgets will be closer to balancing f

The Dems and Reps are both right about certain things; those are their talking points that they use to get votes. The problem is that they're both completely wrong about many more things.

Yes, we should stop spending on irrelevant things. But space isn't irrelevant; the computer you're using uses electronics technology developed in the Apollo program. However, all this military activity IS irrelevant, and should be cut. Giveaways to corrupt, mismanaged industries is a waste too, and should be cut. Tax b

radiotelescope on the far side of the moon, in the giant EM shadow the moon makes of our emissions?

The first few millimetres are enough to shield a radio telescope, the remaining 3400+km are redundant.

But it would have been nice to see a copy of MSL sent to the moon a few years ago. (While they were waiting for the next Mars launch window.) The skycrane rig should have enough delta-v & more than enough thrust to land on the moon. The RTG should have been able to keep the rover warm during nightfall. And since most of the design work was already done, and I bet dollars to donuts they made multiple cop

Well we could, yeah... but what for? Other than bragging rights and planting the flag?

Mining for Helium-3 for the also underfunded, and therefor non-existent, fusion projects.

A smaller gravity well launchpad for said robotic probes.

The technological breakthroughs that would come with trying to sustain life long term in a harsh unforgiving environment.

I recently heard a very interesting presentation by a scientist working on fusion where he had shown the historical investment in fusion research and made a very good point that instead of saying "fusion is 25 years away" one should really be saying "fusion is $80 billion away".

Apparently this number has consistently come up in reviews of fusion programs, but the funding was being whittled away year after year.

He-3 fusion is harder than D-D fusion. Meaning that we'll have D-D fusion decades before we have He-3 fusion. And "harder" means higher temperature, greater pressure, which means if we can develop He-3 fusion, the same technology will make D-D fusion plants smaller and more efficient, which will increase the number of applications (such as ships' powerplants.)

And one of the waste products from D-D fusion? Helium 3. It will be a century or so after we crack practical fusion before we need outside sources of He-3.

And even then, given the low density of He-3 in the regolith (it's a trace element), the amount of mining means you'd need a substantial presence on the moon. A full blown mining colony. And guess what their ships and vehicles and bases will use for power? D-D fusion plants. Coz the small amount of waste produced by neutronic fusion is just not an issue in space. And one of the waste products from D-D fusion... oh yeah.

Calling for mining He-3 fusion today is like calling for airport noise regulations in the middle ages. It just makes you (and space advocacy in general) look stupid.

True, but only in trivial amounts. Even if the price didn't drop, the whole market isn't big enough to fund a single lunar mission. Nor fund the development of the hardware. And even if you could, somehow, get the cost of development and operation down enough to make a profit, you would be talking about small robotic systems, built like current nano-sats. It'd be cool if someone did that, even China, but it wouldn't advance human spaceflight; and it's certainly not a reason to justify humans on the moon.

You don't get as much science, as fast, with robotic probes as you do with people walking around. You also don't develop technology nearly as quickly; the Apollo program contributed tons of things to our technology, and we're not seeing those contributions with robotic probes. They're nice for exploring far-off things where you're not in as much of a hurry or they're just too far away to feasibly reach with humans with present technology, and for doing so on a small budget, but that's it. If you want to

apollo was a military program. if you really want technological development, start a new cold war with the russians or chinese. you don't even have to go to space.

We're in two shooting wars now, and there's almost no technological development resulting from it, except perhaps remotely-piloted aircraft. And what good does another cold war do? At least with space exploration, you actually get a lot of good science, plus you develop space-based capabilities that are good for many things besides military pur

Spirit outlived even the wildest speculations about its lifespan, making possible the remarkable discoveries about the igneous, aqueous, and aeolian processes that shaped the landscape that it and we roamed. But despite these successes, I became painfully aware of the shortcomings of robotic exploration of Mars. In a word, it is cumbersome. It took years of painstaking effort to explore just those few square kilometers of Gusev crater. Many tens of humans had to participate to guide the rover along a path that was carefully chosen to maximize both safety and science potential. Although Spirit proved to be much more robust and capable than anyone imagined, its speed and mobility were limiting factors. And despite a science payload exquisitely adapted to the tasks it was designed for, surely we failed to recognize and understand important clues to the geologic history we came to investigate. The experience of exploring a planet with a rover is both incredibly exciting and rewarding and incredibly frustrating. It is science by committee modulated by engineering constraints.

Many on the science team echoed the sentiment that a human geologist could have performed the years of exploration done by Spirit in just a few weeks or perhaps days. It's true that Spirit's amazing toolkit is still unavailable to a terrestrial field geologist. But simple tools combined with the eyes, hands, boots, and brain of a human far outstrip the capabilities of a rover, even those of the next generation Mars Science Laboratory. Given the impossibility of real- time interaction between a human and a robotic surrogate across the millions of kilometers separating Earth from Mars, robotic exploration will never replace what is achievable by humans. Here I am focused on the scientific achievements. The ones that arise from humanity expanding into the solar system, by definition, require humans. Robots should never be viewed as a substitute for humans directly experiencing another world.

If you are interested in spending dollars well, then the current approach isn't a good one. Above we see a two order magnitude improvement between an instance of unmanned space exploration and the manned equivalent of a single geologist. But the manned mission wouldn't cost two orders of magnitude more (for example, Zubrin's "Direct Mars" approach is thought to cost a few tens of billions, assuming no major innovation in launch vehicle costs) and it'd put down a team for at least a couple of years.

Not everything experiences this sort of improvement (eg, orbital imaging, communcation), but it doesn't make sense to claim that unmanned is strictly better when it's not.

Similar arguments hold for more mundane improvements such as manufacturing batches of probes rather than one-off designs. For example, for the cost of the Mars Science Laboratory which will attempt to land in a few days, one could have built and launched several (I think up to six) more Mars Exploration Rovers. Further all of these rovers could have been operating on Mars for years now. MSL is somewhat more capable, but there was a dear cost, a slowing down of research on Mars.

Well we could, yeah... but what for? Other than bragging rights and planting the flag?

Also an alternate platform for putting things in Earth orbit. Currently, it costs around $5-20k per kg to put anything in orbit. Even with vast improvements in cost for launch infrastructure, you're limited by propellant cost. I assume a factor of three over the cost of propellant, which yields $100 to $300 per kg. Economically, anything that you can use now on the Moon is free. So, for example, if you can get some sort of self-replicating factory to the Moon, you can build launch infrastructure and propell

Bolden speaks as though humanity will march toward the stars arm in arm, full of brotherly love. Like Kipling said though "When everyone is dead, the Great Game is finished. Not before." Putting concerns about international cooperation ahead of long term US interests is going to hurt in the future, especially since China and Russia will put their own interests first.

When it becomes feasible to extract resources from space, the space race will never end.

I think nationalism is one of the stupider elements of human culture, but separate competing organizations would be more a benefit than hindrance.There needs to be different teams, with different methods, and different failures and successes. Without that, people would never learn, and nothing would ever move forward.

Its nice to see NASA talking about international cooperation. Perhaps this will make ESA, and certain ESA member states who are notoriously tight fisted with contributions and refuse to participate in any manned flight *coughUKcough*, start to think seriously about how Europe can be involved. I know people who work for ESA and for EADS, and there is no shortage of will in the industry to start pushing out properly.

As far as I'm concerned, any non-international deep space exploration runs the risk of leading to conflict between nations in space, and that is a really dumb idea. We've seen, from ASAT tests and accidental collisions, what even a handful of destroyed satellites can do to the space debris situation. A full-on space war means we lose access to LEO entirely, for a very long time.

This is all true - but it is still the case that ESA will not move on manned spaceflight without a nudge from NASA. The only indigenous European manned space hardware is the ATV - which only exists so that we can have a stake in the ISS.

Its not like there is a shortage of technical ideas; EADS were quite willing to turn ATV into a proper manned spacecraft, and Ariane 5 shouldn't have been too hard to man rate, seeing as it was designed to be man rated in the first place for the abandoned Hermes shuttle. Th

With the current economic crisis in Europe? No way. Even before the crisis blew up they were dragging their feet all the time. Remember the ATV derived manned transportation systems proposed by Astrium? Then there is the Vinci engine which is a high-performance upper stage engine capable of multiple restarts. They have tested it to death and have been waiting for years for a Ariane 5 second stage that uses it to be funded.

Perhaps you ought to check the overlap between the ESA and countries suffering from the financial crisis which is much larger than just the EU. But if you're not so inclined, I'll just note that every member of the ESA experiences some degree of trouble.

In addition, even if your country isn't on the Euro, if you trade with the EU (which every member state in the ESA does), you're connected to the Euro.

ITAR. This is a big barrier for other countries to participate with NASA (US space program). Some of these have simply given up on collaboration with NASA, even though they are behind in space technology but with ITAR they are probably better off working on programs that have no NASA involvement.

I apologize for not having the time to watch the video, but I have a question for whoever does: did Bolden really say the US wouldn't lead a mission to mars? That sounds fishy. Or did he instead say we wouldn't "go it alone" to Mars, and then separately say that the US won't be the leader on every single space initiative (which is very reasonable - perhaps obvious)?

To me this summary and most of the slashdot responses so far sound either biased or trolling, but I'll admit if I'm wrong.

OF COURSE a Mars mission shouldn't be American led, regardless of who's funding it, who's launching it, and whose technology is making it happen. Making it American-led might make someone else feel less important.

After all (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/07/charles-bolden-nasas-fore_n_637854.html) NASAs foremost mission "...Is To Improve Relations With Muslim World..."

That you moved up the landing schedule form Monday morning (EDT) to Friday.
It is not the eve of the landing.
I am not playing grammar Nazi. There are likely grammatical errors in my post.
But as a news outlet, can we get facts right?????

Reading the article leads me to the conclusion that Mr. Bolden pretty much represents everything I consider wrong with NASA. Instead of bold or inspiring visions, he appears to be thinking small and doing small, which is pretty much the opposite of what I would expect from a NASA administrator. Yes, sure, resources are always a constraint and not everything that would be cool can be done but he actively avoids even contemplating going beyond his quite limited horizon.

For starters, regarding Mars he says that it should be an international mission, which is not a bad choice per se, however, international projects are very difficult to pull off effectively. There will inevitably be bickering who pays how much, which country gets how many jobs and whose astronauts will be going. It's basically the issue of senators bringing in the pork via NASA but on a bigger (international) scale. Just negotiating the terms of such cooperation can take as long as the project itself and can easily exceed a decade (for comparison, see ITER which has been on the drawing board well over a decade before the international consortium green-lit it).

So, international projects make things more complicated and they take longer. Sure, you get all the feel-good humanity thing and the cost is born by a larger base but the frictional costs are much higher. Nevertheless, I would've given him a pass on it if he hadn't said that the "U.S. cannot always be the leader". I'm sorry, but why not? I'm not even an American but if I were and the resources could be mustered, why not go ahead, saving the decade-long negotiation cycle? To me, this sounded like an excuse not to do it at all by postponing it indefinitely ("We're working on it, look, we're already negotiating the terms for 5 years straight now!")

However, what really shocked me was his answer what he would do given an unlimited budget. That question was a softball to float some bold ideas to the public about what could be done. He could have suggested space habitats, moon/asteroid bases, thousands of robotic missions to map out the solar system, even more modest goals like developing new rockets and other lift capabilities. Instead what we get is literally "nothing". He would "complete Obama's plan" and "not use the extra money". In essence, he has no ideas at all and is only capable to follow instructions handed to him. I'm rather sure even NASA's janitorial staff has more creativity than that.

Well, we had a visionary right before Bolden. His vision was give lots of money to ATK. At this point, I think we'll see the real action from the private world. The national programs are all pretty screwed up.

Seriously... who the F cares if you guys went to the moon 40 years ago??? you cant even go back anymore !! These guys will !!... And thats what you should worry about !! Stop sitting on your ass America... this is exactly why other countries have stopped looking at you for inspiration... i admire the Chinese and sometimes i wonder if my country would be better off bordering them instead of the once Might US of A...

Sure you guys USED to be tough and strong... now you're just a bunch of fat-asses with useless trophy's on their shelves... i wouldnt be proud of that !

What are you on about with the "you guys" perspective? I don't know who you think you're fooling. It only takes one read of your post and one can deduce from the assortment of grammar and punctuation errors that you're surely a product of the American educational system.

And the moon unless the neo-cons continue to try to kill off private space. Even now, the republicans have cut a deal with NASA to fund 2.5 bids. However, the neo-cons are now attempting to tell NASA WHO will win those: ATK's Liberty will get 1, Boeing will get 1, and L-Mart will get.5. IOW, the neo-cons are attempting to cut out ALL of the new space, including SpaceX.

Given an unlimited budget, he'd just do what he was told, go to Mars, and not do anything else. No matter what else he's done, that makes it sound like NASA needs a leader with some vision, not an administrator who simply carries out political commands.

I find it incredibly sad that the organisation I looked up to as a UK child (NASA) are pretty much falling from grace due to funding issues, and a lack of imagination by the powers that be. Yes, the North American Space Agency inspired this child from the UK.
NASA, back in my day, were something to look up to, the pride of the WORLD - they were my Space Agency too even though they're from the USA, because they were doing stuff that no-one, not even the Soviets, could manage.... and now? Now that NASA have

They'll mess it up royally. And no, I'm not being racist or patriotic or any other thing you'll throw at me. And I'm not hoping anyone dies or anything like that. It's that China wants to make a big push into space for some reason. The US and the Soviet Union did that back in the 60s, and a whole lot of bad stuff happened to both countries. Why? Because we were in "The Space Race." Even Cracked.com did an article on the Soviet's hushed up failures. So let someone else test out the technology before

stuff like this is where the right wing gets the whole 'democrats hate america' thing from. this guy should be working towards america becoming 'the' space authority in the world, not by force, necessarily, but by technology and drive.

Perhaps more to the point, the Obama administration immediately corrected Bolden and a NASA spokesman confirmed that Bolden had misspoke:

"NASA's core mission remains one of space exploration, science and aeronautics," Michael Cabbage told SPACE.com. "Administrator Bolden regrets that a statement he made during a recent interview mischaracterized that core mission."

Anybody who still recites this incident as actual policy rather than a gaffe induced by peer pressure, which was immediately retracted, is just trolling. Furthermore I defy you to identify any actual funds that Nasa has spent on Muslim outreach instead of space exploration in the two years since Bolden said that.

Holy shit, I didn't even realize how bad that was, and apparently this came straight from Obama himself. No wonder the right-wingers say Obama is a "closet Muslim"; with directives like this ("reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering") that's all the ammo they need. And what historic contribution anyway? Sure, the people living in those countries 1000 years ago did some prett

"reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering"

The people who I have heard saying things like that are simply trying to encourage ME nations to be proud of their heritage the way that (say) Egypt and Turkey are, rather than blowing it up the way the Taliban do. Above and beyond petty religious/political struggles, the ME is the cradle of civilization, it's heritage is ours.

If the ME nations need the Americans to make them proud of their heritage, while simultaneously invading and occupying their countries, then they're hopeless. And the ME isn't the only cradle of civilization; there are two more in India and China that arose around the same time.

Also, more pertinently, this stuff shouldn't be concerning NASA at all. Their mission is (or should be) to pursue space exploration for the USA, and that's it, not to do diplomatic shit. Leave that to the diplomats in the State Department. The only time NASA should be doing anything international is when they're working on projects together with foreign space agencies, which would be JAXA, ESA, the Russians, etc. The Islamic countries don't have any space

When I became the NASA administrator, (President Obama) charged me with three things," Bolden said in the interview which aired last week. "One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineeri

I have no doubt that Charles Bolden was taken into the White House and that Barack Obama very likely said those things to him. For Bolden's tenure as NASA Administrator, those may even been seen as admirable things for him to accomplish while in that position.

I do think this is way overblown though. I'll also say that on the whole Bolden seems to be a very competent administrator over the agency in spite of the fact that he gets almost no support from the White House in terms of his agency's direction nor

I have no doubt that Charles Bolden was taken into the White House and that Barack Obama very likely said those things to him.

Exactly; what failed was that Bolden wasn't as politically savvy as the Obama Administration would have liked, and he basically repeated verbatim what he was told, and that didn't suit Obama at all, so they had to issue a "clarification". He's lucky they didn't remove him from his post, or worse have him disappeared.

Bolden doesn't belong on that list. From what I've read, he seems to be trying to get NASA doing something productive, not Muslim outreach.

And frankly, Holder shouldn't either. There's a good chance he is guilty of a couple hundred counts of accessory to murder in Mexico and the US, including a shooting of a federal law enforcement officer. That puts him in some scarce company, at least in the US.

That 16-year old girl from China already demonstrated to us what China can do with its genetic manipulation - at least according to the executive director of the American Swim Coaches Association, Mr. John Leonard.

I shudder to imagine what China could do with their new generation, bug-free versions of genetically manipulated super-Chinese into the space !!

Criminals look for the biggest target they can find - it was Windows, but now the same basic malware strategies are turning out to work on Mac OS (since most users assume "virus free" means "protected from all malware"). The malware game though has been more or less the only game in software since Vista/7 closed up a lot of holes.

Widespread Linux (say, Android) is just as vulnerable to those tricks as anyone else.